I'm trying to install Win2K. Have tried upgrading from Win98, from clean format, from command prompt ... every possibility of installation. But I always get the same problem: After the first reboot, a blue dos screen appears, it installs some drivers ... then says Win2K will now start ... the screen goes black and it just hangs there forever. What's wrong? I have a Gateway 2000 PII 300MHz system that I bought about 2 years ago. Gateway is no help becuase they say they wont support me unless the OS came with the PC, which is didn't. Please help!

You probably have a HAL issue, check www.microsoft.com/ and see if your box is on teh HCL list. You might also ask Gateway if they have a new HAL for this box for Windows 2000. DEATH TO GATEWAY!!!!

I've had the same problem, as did a friend of mine. It turned out both of us were having the HDD as primary master, and the CD secondary master. I moved the CD to primary slave, and voilá! The setup ran smooth on both systems. I still havn't figured out what the real problem was, but at least I now know how to get through the setup on my system. Hope this help! :)

Press F8 on bootup and select safe mode and if you can complete the bootup. You have some kind of hardware prob.

First of all if u don't have any important data around then i would suggest u to delete the partition & recreate it, then just disable Boot Virus Protection. still gives the problem send me the exact error along with ur ur hardware config. I will surely help u.

My issue was nothing even similar to what this guy way having a problem with. This is an interesting story and technical story and the easy ones always seem to get the best of everyone. GO FIGURE. I have been a technician for a long time, but this one almost made me go INSANE. I have a Giga-byte GA-5SG100 Motherboard (SIS Chipset), with a PC100 Toshiba DIMM, AMD K6-2 3D-NOW 266Mhz CPU 2.2 core voltage, (originally I had a 4MB (SIS Chipset) AGP Video Card, and a 15GB Maxtor ATA 66 IDE Hard Drive, and a 24X BCM IDE CD-ROM, Serial Mouse, and an AT 101 Keyboard. I had the IDE 15GB HDD setup as Master on the Primary Controller on the Motherboard and the 24X CD-ROM setup as Master on the 2ndary Controller on the Motherboard. I tried loading Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98 1st Edition & 2nd Edition, and Windows NT Server. When I installed Windows ME and Windows 98SE and 1st Edition, I ran FDISK and created 1 large Fat32 Partition, then I booted to a Windows 98 Boot disk and formatted by using command at the a:\ prompt ===> format c: /s/u/c, then I loaded Windows ME. After the Reboot a message flashed very quickly and said something to the effect that the install wasn't complete. Then it booted to the Menu with Normal, Boot Log, Safe Mode... When I choose Normal, the system would flash quickly and then the message would come up "It is now safe to turn off your computer". I powered off, then rebooted my system. It would go back to the menu with Safe Mode highlighted. Then I choose Safe Mode and the system would reboot. Well, I got totally frustrated because I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was going on. When I tried loading Windows 98SE it was a little different. The system had the same symptoms slightly, but when choosing normal mode at the Menu, an error would come up. I researched this error and went to http://www.microsoft.com and went to a few articiles and I started to believe my hardware had problems with it. Well this wasn't the worst of my troubles. Same issues pretty much with Windows 95OSR2. Well then I decided to install Windows NT Server 4.0 becuase I have a full version. It was very odd. I don't have a SCSI Adapter on the system, but I do have ATA 66 Controllers and they were enabled in the AWARD BIOS ver. 1.15 of the system. Anyways... All the files would install to the temp portion on the Hard Drive, then the system would hault and go to a solid blue screen. Same identical problems when loading Windows 2000. I went as far as even booting to a boot disk for Windows 98 with CD-ROM support and tried to run winnt /b from the d:\ prompt (which was my CD-ROM). Still no luck. I was stumped for 2 days on this issue. I downloaded a BIOS upgrade for my system 2.0g for my Giga-Byte GA-5SG100 Motherboard. I updated the BIOS by flashing it properly. I tried swapping the IDE cable with Ultra DMA 66 Cables that came with the Maxtor 15GB ATA 66 Hard Drive. Before I did all that, I booted to a boot disk, ran FDISK, deleted all the partitions, created a 2 GB Fat 16 Partition to install Windows NT Server, then tried installing - Failed. I even Debugged the Hard Drive using the DOS Debug Command. Still same Issues with Windows NT Server and Windows 2000. I cleared CMOS, reset the values, disabled onboard CPU Cache, disable Video BIOS. I did all that I could possibly think of. I even swapped my video card to a NVIDIA TNT2 32MB AGP Video Card and replaced the CPU to an Intel 233 Mhz 2.8 core voltage and set the jumpers on the Motherboard for the correct speed. Still same issue with the Intel 233 Mhz CPU. Ok.. Now I was really stumped. Could it be the Toshiba 128MB Memory module? Well, I went as far as running Norton Diags. (I know all of you are laughing but this is all I had to test out my motherboard and hardware). I don't know what version it is, but it is a pretty good benchmark tool that I have used for several years building computers and testing components). Everything passed. I even ran a 4 hour memory loop on the memory. Everything passed to know avail. Ok... Instead of going by recomendations from co-workers here at Dell and other friends, I went to the internet and started searching on http://google.com. Well I came across a good resource and finally conquered my problem. I finally come to a good link and I will bookmark this link and remember it. #2 Response did it all. I changed my jumper on the CD-ROM to slave and slaved it on the IDE Cable (standard not ATA66). Booted up to Windows 2000 CD and tried it for the last and final resolution. WALLA!!! Fixed. Windows 2000 is up and running fine with no problems so far. I added a SCSI NEC Adapter after the install was complete, then I ran Disk Administrator and formatted the 540MB SCSI Drive and I am using that for backup. Everything is running smooth.